Wait, I'm not sure I follow what you are saying. I believe the only thing that makes sense in this case would be a Roth IRA because you "pay taxes now" on the money but in this case you actually don't have to pay any taxes and won't in the future either. Anything else you invest in will end up costing taxes when you sell it. However I'm having a hard time figuring out the case here where you'd have money to invest at all.

Look at the type of tax to be paid with "anything else you invest in will end up costing taxes when you sell it."

For comparing after-tax vs pre-tax-investments held for the same period, the closer after-tax dollars are to pre-tax dollars (and the longer the term), the better off you are investing with after-tax dollars that will eventually be taxed as capital gains (a regular investment) vs contributing pre-tax dollars to a traditional retirement account which will eventually be taxed as normal income. (This also assumes the future capital gains rate will tend to be lower than the future income tax rate.)

Put simply, I would prefer to invest $1 where the eventual sale will be taxed as capital gains, vs investing that same $1 where the eventual sale will be taxed as normal income. As the original amount to invest that will eventually be taxed as capital gains decreases (from being after-tax and a marginal rate increasing with increasing current income), the advantage becomes less clear.

Software Developers: When you build an application that is designed to hand out work among many people, your answer to "what sort of assignment system should we create" should not involve "well, one super user can scroll through and select a portion of a giant list of documents, right click, then go through a complicated series of menus that default to settings they don't want, then repeat that process for every person who needs work".

I've just been solicited for feedback on my boss by his boss. I'm not super comfortable with this... I honestly don't think I have enough of an opinion on his performance (positive or negative) to give meaningful feedback.

I'm doing something similiar. My grand-boss has asked for feedback from some sort of electronic leadership course thingy. I was one of those selected to reply. The pool of selectees is not large enough to even hint at anonymity.

I generally like my grand-boss, but that does not mean I trust my grand-boss. Therefore, I'm wary of specific negative feedback.

My course has someone that will sit with me and go over differences in how I view myself as compared to how my reports view me. My primary concern isn't that I would retaliate, but more of the surprises. I know I have management weaknesses, I'm primarily worried that areas I think I'm okay in are viewed as weaknesses by others.

I generally like my grand-boss, but that does not mean I trust my grand-boss. Therefore, I'm wary of specific negative feedback.

Maybe I have a bad attitude now, but if my boss asked for feedback, I would give it to him without any hesitation.

I would make sure to mix some positive in with the negative, but that's easy for me. Even the worst boss has some redeeming features.

For example, for someone that yells at meetings, you could list as "A good motivator, but a bit confrontational sometimes. Intimidating to more reserved members of the team."

My old boss had alot of faults (prone to gossip, quick to jump to conclusions, wanted things done 'his' way), but also had good points (an expert in his field, able to quickly get to the heart of a problem instead of being distracted by side issues, able to schedule tasks and people well).

I think if you are honest about it, you can come up with this kind of result for anyone.

I generally like my grand-boss, but that does not mean I trust my grand-boss. Therefore, I'm wary of specific negative feedback.

There's a difference between negative feedback and constuctive feedback.

There is a difference between the age old fear of employer retribution and actual employer retribution too, but you don't see that changing a lot of employee perceptions on the matter. If I trust you enough to have a sidebar with you on such matters as management style without fear of retribution, then I will tell you your failings and work with you to right the ship. Rarely does a manager and an employee truly have such a relationship of trust though.

Wait, I'm not sure I follow what you are saying. I believe the only thing that makes sense in this case would be a Roth IRA because you "pay taxes now" on the money but in this case you actually don't have to pay any taxes and won't in the future either. Anything else you invest in will end up costing taxes when you sell it. However I'm having a hard time figuring out the case here where you'd have money to invest at all.

Look at the type of tax to be paid with "anything else you invest in will end up costing taxes when you sell it."

For comparing after-tax vs pre-tax-investments held for the same period, the closer after-tax dollars are to pre-tax dollars (and the longer the term), the better off you are investing with after-tax dollars that will eventually be taxed as capital gains (a regular investment) vs contributing pre-tax dollars to a traditional retirement account which will eventually be taxed as normal income. (This also assumes the future capital gains rate will tend to be lower than the future income tax rate.)

Put simply, I would prefer to invest $1 where the eventual sale will be taxed as capital gains, vs investing that same $1 where the eventual sale will be taxed as normal income. As the original amount to invest that will eventually be taxed as capital gains decreases (from being after-tax and a marginal rate increasing with increasing current income), the advantage becomes less clear.

Is there a mistake in that thinking?

I'm just pointing out that the income from a Roth IRA is tax free when taken (after 58.5 or 62 or whatever the earliest age is). So by investing $1 in your hypothetical situation where you have no tax liability beyond payroll taxes in a Roth makes the most sense because you will NEVER have to pay federal taxes on it, whereas you will have to pay capital gains on any non-retirement investments. I will entirely grant you that tax deferring that income doesn't make any sense (Don't put it in a 401k or IRA since you get no benefit (though I do believe that avoids paying payroll taxes on it).

I wasn't saying that all .NET developers lack the skill sets to do embedded. The problem is/was that management said "Hey these embedded folks are hard to find and are expensive" surely any developer can do this. If you have read "Learn JavaScript in 21 days" you can develop real-time, memory constrained, embedded software, for safety / mission critical electro mechanical systems.

Yeah, ok, that's what I thought you meant. Just making sure!

re: Boss feedback: I would think the biggest issue there is if you bring up something that you haven't actually discussed with your boss. If you say you have x and y problems with your boss, but you tell your boss "oh yeah, everything's great", I think that's an issue. The only issue you might raise then is "I haven't been able to have a constructive conversation with boss", and the implication there is that you at least made an effort to do so.

I wouldn't think it would be fair to complain to someone's boss about someone's work when that someone doesn't know a complaint even exists.

But, just one note of reality checking: Roth-anythings are just laws, and laws can be changed. I could easily see the law changing to state you have to pay the difference between what your tax rate was to what your tax rate is now, you know, to be fair.

I've just been solicited for feedback on my boss by his boss. I'm not super comfortable with this... I honestly don't think I have enough of an opinion on his performance (positive or negative) to give meaningful feedback.

Is this the uncomfortable dynamic you have been hinting at? That sucks. It's one thing for the big boss to say, "How did Bob handle <single issue or project>?" and another to say, "Can you evaluate Bob, who happens to be your boss?" Hopefully it's the former, and it's being used as part of a feedback loop, not a witch hunt.

But, just one note of reality checking: Roth-anythings are just laws, and laws can be changed. I could easily see the law changing to state you have to pay the difference between what your tax rate was to what your tax rate is now, you know, to be fair.

This is a pertinent point I thought I'd quote for emphasis. As budget deficits increase and we cycle through conflicting and counteracting fiscal-policy-of-the-decade, everything will eventually be on the table for change. Mortgage interest deductions, health benefits deductions, etc. may become taxable overnight, and retirement vehicles are no different. If you are investing at all, you are by definition an optimist because you're assuming that the financial markets (and to a degree, the modern societies on which they rely) will exist in the future when you want to turn your positions into cash.

The same psychology holds true with tax planning. Nothing is certain, we merely trust that we will be able to deal with the changes as they come.

I was involved in a very nasty situation where our group had boss A. Boss A went on to another team but still had a lot of interaction with us. We got a new boss B. A & B both reported boss C. A & B hated each other and since our two groups interacted a lot there was a ton of conflict. Boss C decides to pull the underlings in to evaluate A & B. What was said in the one on ones with boss C was not kept confidential and a lot of people got burned.

I'm just pointing out that the income from a Roth IRA is tax free when taken (after 58.5 or 62 or whatever the earliest age is). So by investing $1 in your hypothetical situation where you have no tax liability beyond payroll taxes in a Roth makes the most sense because you will NEVER have to pay federal taxes on it, whereas you will have to pay capital gains on any non-retirement investments. I will entirely grant you that tax deferring that income doesn't make any sense (Don't put it in a 401k or IRA since you get no benefit (though I do believe that avoids paying payroll taxes on it).

ROTH IRA's have limits, and that limit is far too low to account for all your future retirment needs. That's why you diversify amoung different tax vehicles and take money out of them at different points to minimize your tax burden when you retire.

Quote:

But, just one note of reality checking: Roth-anythings are just laws, and laws can be changed. I could easily see the law changing to state you have to pay the difference between what your tax rate was to what your tax rate is now, you know, to be fair.

But, just one note of reality checking: Roth-anythings are just laws, and laws can be changed. I could easily see the law changing to state you have to pay the difference between what your tax rate was to what your tax rate is now, you know, to be fair.

This is a pertinent point I thought I'd quote for emphasis. As budget deficits increase and we cycle through conflicting and counteracting fiscal-policy-of-the-decade, everything will eventually be on the table for change. Mortgage interest deductions, health benefits deductions, etc. may become taxable overnight, and retirement vehicles are no different. If you are investing at all, you are by definition an optimist because you're assuming that the financial markets (and to a degree, the modern societies on which they rely) will exist in the future when you want to turn your positions into cash.

The same psychology holds true with tax planning. Nothing is certain, we merely trust that we will be able to deal with the changes as they come.

We are also assuming the dollar will mean something in the future as well. But it's definitely true. I don't know how to prepare for retirement without making a few assumptions. I mean aside from building a self sustaining farm and stockpiling seeds/growing herds of animals.

Emkorial - in the hypothetical he posited, the individual must be making so little money than the Roth would not be fully funded in a year (or I suppose could spend the year working outside the US I suppose). But yes, a Roth by itself is not enough in most cases. I was just theorizing what the best investment vehicle would be if you were not paying federal taxes on your money because you made too little. The only situation I came up with that made any sense (and it actually makes a fair amount) is a very forward looking college student who invests nearly all his/her summer income into a Roth and pays 0 income tax because the total made is under whatever the current limit is. In that case they could nearly fully fund a Roth and still pay no taxes but probably be able to live at the same time. It would be tremendously forward looking and could put them in a very good position in their later years.

I am appropriating "grand-boss" for my own use. Thanks for this excellent addition to my vocabulary.

At my old company, which was sufficiently diverse that we sometimes had a sort of pidgin going on, we often used the terms "boss" -> "big boss" -> "big big boss", etc.

One of my biggest complaints about the boss I had most of my time there was that he didn't do enough to insulate us from the unreasonable whims of the management levels above him (or really just think critically about them), so that would have been difficult to discuss in such a review setting.

Roth-anythings are just laws, and laws can be changed. I could easily see the law changing to state you have to pay the difference between what your tax rate was to what your tax rate is now, you know, to be fair.

I see that as an accounting nightmare. There's a far easier way to make Roth withdrawals taxable - a VAT.

Some company got hold of all the domains we own (I guess by a whois listing) and started hammering our support queue with domain renewal notices. I loaded up the email in a Linux VM to see what kind of tomfoolery they were up to.

1. They come with official letterhead linked to various imgur graphics.2. All domains reroute to, I shit you not, invoicetrackingfjghjk4787.com (come on, man, can't you at least try harder?).3. Despite an actually official looking page with words spelled right and everything, it boasts "secure 128 bit encryption" but is not an https page4. Somehow it manages to have the right whois info, I guess there really is some kind of database back end which is more work than you normally find5. Wants all our credit card info, obviously.6. That domain above (without the expanding URL I removed for this post) redirects to a legitimate-looking site... which wants all your credit card info to "log in." Hahahahaha.

... and what's his face took down some servers again. You know things are going to go bad when he asks, "Did anyone touch X? I can't get X to work!" You know X will go down within the hour as he tweaks more settings. Man, I am trying to get some of these implemented:

Put simply, I would prefer to invest $1 where the eventual sale will be taxed as capital gains, vs investing that same $1 where the eventual sale will be taxed as normal income. As the original amount to invest that will eventually be taxed as capital gains decreases (from being after-tax and a marginal rate increasing with increasing current income), the advantage becomes less clear.

Is there a mistake in that thinking?

Where you write 'capital gains' you need to be writing 'long-term capital gains'. Short term capital gains are taxed at the same rate as regular income and nonqualified dividends under current law.

LordFrith wrote:

But, just one note of reality checking: Roth-anythings are just laws, and laws can be changed. I could easily see the law changing to state you have to pay the difference between what your tax rate was to what your tax rate is now, you know, to be fair.

Anything could happen, but it would be very difficult under the tax regime to back-figure marginal tax rates. People have a hard enough time reliably determining the cost-basis of stocks, especially when they're inherited. Then there would also be the question of whether people should get refunds if their Roth distributions would be at a lower rate than when they paid in. Such a requirement would inhibit the government from ever lowering rates and would increase the reliance on targeted loopholes -- but what about the loopholes for which you would otherwise have qualified at the time of a Roth contribution?

As it stands the Roth is a government bargain to get extra revenue now by forgoing future revenue. Considering that another 40% is borrowed and spent in addition to each dollar collected and spent, this has been government policy for decades, regardless of the strength or weakness of the economy.

... in the hypothetical he posited, the individual must be making so little money than the Roth would not be fully funded in a year (or I suppose could spend the year working outside the US I suppose).

Person makes $9.5K/yr.

Person will pay zero in Fed income tax.

Person can fully fund a Roth ($5K). As I said, and then you said, this is the best investment ever, since the contribution and future growth from that contribution will *never* be taxed. (Disregarding payroll taxes, currently 5.65%.)

Now, say that person has other funds available for living, such that there is still some money left over for additional investing. What I'm saying is the person *should not* make a contribution to a traditional retirement account. It would be better to simply invest it in a long-term buy-and-hold strategy.

As the person's income/marginal rate increases, that clear advantage is lessened. As long as the income is less than about $17K, such that the marginal rate is 10%, it still might be considered advantageous. *see edit below

M. Jones wrote:

Where you write 'capital gains' you need to be writing 'long-term capital gains'. Short term capital gains are taxed at the same rate as regular income and nonqualified dividends under current law.

Stipulated. Of course, in my example, for the growth to be tax-deferred it would have to be long-term gains. (I don't bother saying "short-term capital gains," since, as you say, that is just treated as regular income.)

Pre-tax starting value of $1.00 with an eventual total tax of 25% on the entire amount

6%/yr growth

The post-tax investment has a clear advantage for terms under twenty years. Around year 23 they even out, and after that the pre-tax investment has the advantage. (If I did my calcs right. ) Other considerations might include additional flexibility of withdrawals with post-tax invesment; i.e. no penalty for early withdrawal, no mandatory withdrawals after age of 72.5.

Honestly at this point in my career I cannot believe that there are so many individuals at my company who just ignore meeting invites and emails from those they do not know or have not been specifically ordered by their manager to respond to me.

I'm in INTERNAL audit. That means we're on the same team. We both work for the same company. I'm not "out to get you". You think I ENJOY having your distill your process down to an easy to read summary and request evidence? You think I like chasing you down? You think I like embarrassing you in front of your manager when I send them an email saying I've emailed you 3 times and left 2 voice-mails without a response?

So have you had the pleasure of doing that, then writing an excellent report with clear, actionable recommendations that would save the company money, only to have the report killed by some muckety-muck because it would make him look bad because a) it implies she's not perfect and b) she didn't think of it?

(Why yes, I did formerly work in IA and then quit, how did you guess?)

Roth-anythings are just laws, and laws can be changed. I could easily see the law changing to state you have to pay the difference between what your tax rate was to what your tax rate is now, you know, to be fair.

I see that as an accounting nightmare. There's a far easier way to make Roth withdrawals taxable - a VAT.

Exactly. How in the world would anyone calculate this?

A consumption tax or a VAT would kill many of the benefits of a Roth, but I think most would still err on the side of tax diversification. Each year that moves on, the lawmakers get more hamstrung - passing a change to the treatment of mortgage interest taxation is hard enough, it may be higher political risk to change the rules around the Roth.

Just had a phone interview today. Out of relatively nowhere, and knocked it out of the park.

I greatly admire Company A, and interviewed with them last summer. Unsuccessfully, much to my chagrin.

Late last week, The hiring manager (Bob) at Company A, called me up and wanted to shoot my resume over to another place I'm familiar with, and also admire (Company B). It's for a position that would provide wonderful challenges working with the new technologies I'm interested in, blending them with stuff I already know.

So. Much. Win.

I'll stress over Bob's motivations later. I'm in too good of a mood right now; my cynicism is at low tide.

Software Developers: When you build an application that is designed to hand out work among many people, your answer to "what sort of assignment system should we create" should not involve "well, one super user can scroll through and select a portion of a giant list of documents, right click, then go through a complicated series of menus that default to settings they don't want, then repeat that process for every person who needs work".

Software Developers: When you build an application that is designed to hand out work among many people, your answer to "what sort of assignment system should we create" should not involve "well, one super user can scroll through and select a portion of a giant list of documents, right click, then go through a complicated series of menus that default to settings they don't want, then repeat that process for every person who needs work".

The correct answer is "user-managed queue".

You use applications built by Linux Developers, too?

(Sorry, couldn't resist).

It's a fair cop! Any time a developer not schooled in HCI or HFE designs an application in a vacuum from his/her users, you tend to get things like these. Mostly because they work and are programmatically easy to do. I apologize on behalf of my brethren. The thing is, I have spend time learning HFE and even having spent a bunch of time on it, users still almost ALWAYS immediately identify much better/more user friendly ways to do things that I never even considered.

It's a fair cop! Any time a developer not schooled in HCI or HFE designs an application in a vacuum from his/her users, you tend to get things like these. Mostly because they work and are programmatically easy to do. I apologize on behalf of my brethren. The thing is, I have spend time learning HFE and even having spent a bunch of time on it, users still almost ALWAYS immediately identify much better/more user friendly ways to do things that I never even considered.

This is especially common in the health care context, where developers know fuckall about provider workflow. X_x

Unfortunately, consulting by healthcare providers in the trenches tends to be expensive, so companies are loathe to pay for it. (They used to be, anyway.) I think a company that took workflow seriously from day 1 would be able to build a significant competitive advantage, all other things being equal.

It's a fair cop! Any time a developer not schooled in HCI or HFE designs an application in a vacuum from his/her users, you tend to get things like these. Mostly because they work and are programmatically easy to do. I apologize on behalf of my brethren. The thing is, I have spend time learning HFE and even having spent a bunch of time on it, users still almost ALWAYS immediately identify much better/more user friendly ways to do things that I never even considered.

This is especially common in the health care context, where developers know fuckall about provider workflow. X_x

Unfortunately, consulting by healthcare providers in the trenches tends to be expensive, so companies are loathe to pay for it. (They used to be, anyway.) I think a company that took workflow seriously from day 1 would be able to build a significant competitive advantage, all other things being equal.

Healthcare software is picked for one of two reasons: extremely inexpensive outlay for setup which the business or hospital will purchase to save money OR Doctor users are wooed much like how a drug rep does it by presenting one "doctor" who swears he was involved and its perfect and one doctor who "used it at location X and it was perfect". The biggest issue is that after the sale they don't have customizers on the ground to work with the workflow and modify the user interface to properly match the work because the business won't pay for them or the workflow analyst is so bad they make things worse. 5+ years in Healthcare IT. I can tell you how software routinely falls down and why. Its usually about money and egos. If what I have read on this board is fully true then its a lot like a SAP/CRM rollout except instead of people losing jobs they just have patients that are negatively effected for possibly years.

The biggest issue is that after the sale they don't have customizers on the ground to work with the workflow and modify the user interface to properly match the work because the business won't pay for them or the workflow analyst is so bad they make things worse.

The biggest issue IME is that they don't have developers sitting side by side with users to see and use the workflow. There are some obvious reasons why that cannot always happen, but it is SO valuable. Just 1 hour of drilling through their own menus every little thing will show the developer what they need to fix, without any formal HCI/HFE learning.

The biggest issue IME is that they don't have developers sitting side by side with users to see and use the workflow.

The biggest issue is that the software involved is a 40+ year old pile of cruft that is essentially unmaintainable. And the vendors aren't particularly keen on modifications due to things like massive vendor lock-in and inertia.

Software Developers: When you build an application that is designed to hand out work among many people, your answer to "what sort of assignment system should we create" should not involve "well, one super user can scroll through and select a portion of a giant list of documents, right click, then go through a complicated series of menus that default to settings they don't want, then repeat that process for every person who needs work".

The correct answer is "user-managed queue".

You use applications built by Linux Developers, too?

(Sorry, couldn't resist).

It's a fair cop! Any time a developer not schooled in HCI or HFE designs an application in a vacuum from his/her users, you tend to get things like these. Mostly because they work and are programmatically easy to do. I apologize on behalf of my brethren. The thing is, I have spend time learning HFE and even having spent a bunch of time on it, users still almost ALWAYS immediately identify much better/more user friendly ways to do things that I never even considered.

So, this particular tool is Stratify, which is now owned by Autonomy/HP. As a result, I don't expect improvement.

Within the tool, we load a pool of documents - generally the contents of someone's inbox. I then spread the work of reviewing those documents among many people.

Numerous developers (it's not just this platform - this step is almost universally handled poorly) require someone to intervene and give out work. Then, if someone runs low and you're out of unassigned work, you end up robbing from one person to give to another. It's particularly fun when you start looking at the dollar cost of having an idle worker.

The best way to handle this is for the admin user to define a set of work to be done, then have it broken up into properly-sized chunks. Some platforms get this idea right.

Then, the best way to handle giving that out is to put all the chunks in a stack, letting people pop an assignment off the top as needed. Bonus points if the people getting from the stack can't see how much is left (knowing that the work is about to run out cuts productivity). Extra credit if it's easy for me, as the admin, to see who has what and where we are in the process at any given time.

Xerox has the best assignment system of any of these tools at this point (and, with a few minor modifications would be what I consider the optimal solution to the work assignment process - namely, that it could taper the assignment size to give smaller ones at the end and warn me if a batch hasn't been worked on in x period of time), but other tools have different features so sometimes the need to handle assignments for large teams falls by the wayside as other needs take precedence.

The other reason is that UX is by far the most undervalued aspect of programmers. Building a web server is easier than building a web page for most developers.

Agreed on the first part, disagreed (in word, not spirit) on the second.

It's easy for most programmers to build a web page, but they lack the mental framework to figure out if something is a good idea. There is a ton of "look how smart we are" HTML/CSS/JS floating around out there that creates a ridiculously bad user experience.

Today's fun project: I am installing company mandated sales spyware on old Pentium 4 systems with 512mb RAM and .NET 4.0 framework requirements. On XP. Because they won't upgrade what ain't broke, right? The installation requires administrative privileges, and they are locked down tighter than the skin of a bongo drum. The installer completely takes over the machine. Even better, everyone is on roaming profiles on a 100mb shared connection. Hey, if they want to pay me for 30-45 minutes sitting in front of an installer per system, it's their dime.